Peter F. Hamilton and I have a fraught reading relationship. He
has written some of the best Science Fiction I have ever read,
some of the best concepts, some of the most lyrical evocation
of those concepts (Morning Light Mountain). He has also written
some of the worst dreck I have ever struggled through, he is
obsessed with harems, his worldbuilding falls back on regular
and routine patterns, he thinks he can write a sex scene.

And yet, and yet Morning Light Mountain. So I keep reading his
stuff, with a heavy hand on the DNF tiller. In that context
then, "Salvation" is certainly a book which I have finished, so
its not _as_ bad as much of his previous output.

In fact, there is plenty of this which is pretty damned good.
Hamilton has chosen this book to explore the Fermi Paradox, and
like most other decent SF writers, he has chosen to answer it in
the negative - there are plenty of other galactic civilisations,
they just know to be quiet.

His setup this time for FTL travel is, again, portals, but, in
some sort of weird nod to contemporary concerns, there are no
trains this time, just people walking. This is an immediate
improvement, as is the apparent lack of harems to be found in
the pages. Thing is though, this just all reads as standard
Hamiltonian worldbuilding, just with a few quirks as opposed to
a radical reimagining.

As someone else once wrote, there should be PhDs about the
socio-political structures of his novels. Here again a
post-scarcity society is contained by a monopolist interest
in the means of FTL - now monikered Connexion - albeit there
is an alternative viewpoint represented by the Utopials, an
alternative which comes with a price.

All that said, there is a decent story underlying the narrative,
which is presented like a "Pilgrims Progress", as each of the
initial group presents their own experiences of "odd" events
which peel back the layers of the society they inhabit. In that
it reads kind of like a "fixup", short stories within a common
frame of reference.

Thing is, it works as a novel, there is enough dissonance of
content and tone that this conceit delivers as an exploration of
the society shown. I have tried to avoid the usual "here's the
plot" shortcut of reviewing, but to be fair to hamilton, I can't
see how I could discuss any of the plot from the perspective
of someone who's finished the book without disclosing those
events/facts which make the book succeed.

The issues with previous Hamilton books still remain - female
characters are exclusively portrayed and represented from and
with the male gaze. The über-competent soldier woman is also
a manic pixie fuck machine, the sex scenes now feature badly
written same-sex relationships, but they're still badly written.
I'll probably forget everything about this book within a week.

But for that week, I'll consider it happily. There's a lot to
admire in Hamilton's writing, genuinely, but I'm not happy to
recommend any of his books to anyone without going through all
of the above. I wish this wasn't the case, but he continues to
fail to advance as a writer.